This 1940 cycle of five poems is included in Poems and Long Poems (Stikhotvoreniya i poemy), published in 1979. The poem’s first appearance in the journal Leningrad (1946) was suppressed swiftly, and the publication led to the poem’s condemnation when Andrei Zhdanov, Joseph Stalin’s cultural watchdog, moved to have Akhmatova expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers that same year. The poem is “one of her most famous cycles” (Reeder 30).
The opening poem suggests that the events of 1940 have sealed the fate of the century, now that it has seen Paris overrun and a stunned silence hangs over the city, where Akhmatova honeymooned in 1910.
The second poem is addressed “To the Londoners” and calls up Shakespeare to suggest that World War II is providing the material for him to write another play of similar stature to Hamlet, Caesar, or Lear. The implication is that events such as these require the master’s hand. To underscore the devastation of the London Blitz, Akhmatova declares that “bearing the dove Juliet to her grave” would be preferable to events beginning in September 1940. Certainly the news of Juliet’s death would be easier to read, and yet time seems not to care what kind of history it writes.
In the third poem, Akhmatova narrows the focus from a concern for history to her concrete memory of a postrevolution émigré living in London. The epigram is taken from a poem that Osip Mandelstam wrote for this mutual friend. After the overwhelming news of the bombing has been absorbed, Akhmatova’s thoughts turn to Salomeya Andronikova, “a Petersburg beauty” (Reeder 813). This friend personifies the untroubled loveliness of the “thirteenth year” with its “lilacs” and is therefore a striking contrast to the 40th and its thorns. Her “Daryal eyes” invoke the natural splendor of the Daryal Pass in the central Caucasus. In the end, however, she is a “Shade,” a ghost of memory.
The fourth poem in the cycle turns to look north in response to the German invasion of Denmark and the Soviet invasion of Finland—Normandy prudently being substituted to preempt the censor (814). Here again, Akhmatova conflates personal history with contemporary events and alludes to the power and responsibility of writing. She envisions now “deserted houses” she once visited and knows that “Someone’s recent coziness” is disrupted, that the war is “reprinting” the stories of familiar places.
Akhmatova’s memory is so troubled by the losses she has faced because of ideological conflicts both domestic and foreign that she closes the cycle by “giving you notice / That I am living for the last time.” Using a variety of similes drawn from nature, she has written lyrically of her ghosts, haunted by the comfortless cries of those lost ones who survive in her memory. At the end of the poem, she promises not to survive her death, not to intrude on the peace of those she leaves behind.
Bibliography
Akhmatova, Anna. The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova. Expanded edition. Edited with an introduction by Roberta Reeder, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer. Boston: Zephyr Press, 1997.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Anna Akhmatova: A Memoir.” In The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova. Expanded edition, edited with an introduction by Roberta Reeder, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer, 35–55. Boston: Zephyr Press, 1997.
Nayman, Anatoly. Remembering Anna Akhmatova. Translated by Wendy Rosslyn. New York: Henry Holt, 1991.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Russian Formalism
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